The Archimedes was designed as the successor to Acorn's sucessful bbc microcomputer series and includes some backward compatibility and a 6502emulator. Several utilities are included free on disk (later in ROM) such as a text editor, paint and draw programs. Software emulators are also available for the ibm pc as well as add-on intel processor cards.

There have been several series of Archimedes: A300, A400, A3000, A5000, A4000 and risc pc.